Best time skip period for a good revamp?

[Beloren]

To make the most engaging revamp that could set up a whole host of interesting stories and developments, how far ahead should a time skip appear for wow?

Considering you would want many of the races to have recovered, where do you hope your fave race would be after a time skip and what would be your realistic expectation of what blizzard would do to them?

Will every race have improved or should some have fallen on very hard times and. Become the new night elves of the era?


With all the cosmic events happening, I can say the story is in prime position for a great magical reset. Magic can potential reset Azeroth or we can time skip.

Which would you prefer and what do you reckon will happen ?

[Falkeshall]

I think a magical reset would feel like such a gut-punch that I'd be done forever. I want the stories my character(s) has been involved with to matter and not to be hand-waved away with waking up after a dream / in the shower / magic timey-wimey nonsense. What I'd like Blizz to do, is just tell a story that I can interact with, that adds new chapters without erasing previous ones.

A jump forward and a "by the way all this stuff happened" could work though. Azeroth (and beyond) sure need some new faces.

[ThatsOurEric]

100 Years would be the minimum for me.

[Soon-TM]

I think a magical reset would feel like such a gut-punch that I'd be done forever. I want the stories my character(s) has been involved with to matter and not to be hand-waved away with waking up after a dream / in the shower / magic timey-wimey nonsense. What I'd like Blizz to do, is just tell a story that I can interact with, that adds new chapters without erasing previous ones.

A jump forward and a "by the way all this stuff happened" could work though. Azeroth (and beyond) sure need some new faces.

I hope you aren't playing Horde then, because in that case a lot of what you do isn't even happening.

More OT, the longer the skip, the better. Current Azeroth is way, waaaaay too much $&#@ed (Cataclysm, the Legion invasion, Sargie's lil' poker in Silithus) to see reasonable fixes in anything <20 years.

[Amnaught]

Time is not a construct of death, everyone experiences it differently there. No "magical preservation" needed, we simply go back to Azeroth at the end of Shadowlands to discover that decades have passed

[Ragnarohk]

I selected 5 years so that current things can still be relevant.

Instead of time skipping, I would prefer just retaking old storylines. We don't need 100% new content every expansion (new zones, villains, heroes). Entire expansions could be coined from story lines, characters and zones that were just discontinued.

[Falkeshall]

I hope you aren't playing Horde then, because in that case a lot of what you do isn't even happening.

True true, Alliance toon.

[cuafpr]

unless it's timed with an expac like SL where we could be outside normal time anything over 5-10 years is pushing it imo. I'd set it up so an expac sends the heroes to some world outside of the normal flow of time, come back and its been so long they were presumed dead... possibly just remember in song/legend if the skip is long enough. would be the best time to have done a level reset, and to do a skill reset etc...basically wow 2.0

[Malania]

I'd be happy with WoW coming to an end. The stories that started in WC1-3 have all finished. The current game setting isn't that interesting anymore which is why they're bringing back all the fan favourites via the afterlife to keep people engaged. It has to end some time. No need to time skip, just show the horde moving more to a system of cooperation like the alliance, the pair of them starting to settle into peaceful coexistence and call it a day.

[Lochton]

To make the most engaging revamp that could set up a whole host of interesting stories and developments, how far ahead should a time skip appear for wow?

Considering you would want many of the races to have recovered, where do you hope your fave race would be after a time skip and what would be your realistic expectation of what blizzard would do to them?

Will every race have improved or should some have fallen on very hard times and. Become the new night elves of the era?


With all the cosmic events happening, I can say the story is in prime position for a great magical reset. Magic can potential reset Azeroth or we can time skip.

Which would you prefer and what do you reckon will happen ?

About 5-10 years, I believe. Good timing would've been if time ran differently in Shadowlands but that was changed to the concept of time making it feel like going slower.

I would love a skip so that zone could have a reason to be updated.

[Zantera]

Something that's long enough to have interesting changes to the world and giving us the feeling of having to catch up with whats going on, but also not too long because you still want to come across a lot of the same npcs and characters.

[Stardrift]

At this point? Take us to a whole new era on Azeroth. I'm tired of these shitty shells of characters we once loved. Nothing makes sense anymore, everything is bloated, and any time these characters come together it just looks like a bin of old action figures.

The story has been exhausted, and is exhausting to follow. "Campaign questlines" are just kill&collect with anime disposition without any weight or substance. There's no actual story in-game beyond raids. Sure you can consider all the extra steps but everything has been going from point A, to point B, to point A again until we beat the shit out of something in a raid... With 8.2 and 8.3 being exceptions as Azshara is back to square one again and N'zoth is theorized to still be alive in yet another prison..

The story is beyond stale. And the new audience Shadowlands brought in are already disinterested and feeling betrayed by the piss poor writing. Writing that only appears in interviews, by the way. Not to mention the incredibly slow pace.

Best bet would be to just throw everything off the table and start new.

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I'd be happy with WoW coming to an end. The stories that started in WC1-3 have all finished. The current game setting isn't that interesting anymore which is why they're bringing back all the fan favourites via the afterlife to keep people engaged. It has to end some time. No need to time skip, just show the horde moving more to a system of cooperation like the alliance, the pair of them starting to settle into peaceful coexistence and call it a day.

Blizzard would never end this cycle of piss and shit. But we can only hope.

They've gotta put a halt at 10.0 and put the game on cruise control. End the story. Give it the HOTS treatment or just pull the plug entirely.

I only worry for what they have planned for classic. Classic+ with content and updates voted for by the community would be the best approach, realistically.

But if they go about it the same way they did with retail.. Deciding for us how we play the game, how long we can play it for.. It'll just be a shitshow.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

At least 200 years. Long enough for a new era and the status quo is completely different. The current world and characters have been exhausted and the writing has been getting poorer and poorer to try to keep them going. Start fresh with a new cast of characters and the races being in different situations than they are now.

[Holdodlig]

I think it should be at least 20 to 30 years so you can skip a generation of mortal characters and humanlike lifespan without having to skip all the major lore figures. 20 / 30 years would also let enough time to pass to create new locations without having to change everything.

[Dazmalak]

They can time skip all they want to whenever they want, but it won't matter unless they shift their game design. Blizzard is not invested in its world anymore. Hell, the modern writers and devs give me the impression they don't even like the setting or anything it originated from or they wouldn't be so hell bent on radically changing it and erasing the past. It's all just an excuse to make dungeons/raids. PvE content is their strength and that's all they really care about. Repetitive, unimaginative questing, a stagnant unresponsive world, professions that don't matter, Disneyesque story, ridiculously imbalanced PvP, killing immersion with modern moral and political ideologies, and so forth and so on.

If they time skipped, we'd just get the same shit. Whatever changes they made to the world would no doubt be steps backwards and be uninteresting or get resolved immediately and be of no real consequence. I don't think Blizzard should waste their time revamping anything if all they plan to do is make everything a stepping stone to the next raid; the only content they think matters.

[melzas]

I'd be happy with WoW coming to an end. The stories that started in WC1-3 have all finished. The current game setting isn't that interesting anymore which is why they're bringing back all the fan favourites via the afterlife to keep people engaged. It has to end some time. No need to time skip, just show the horde moving more to a system of cooperation like the alliance, the pair of them starting to settle into peaceful coexistence and call it a day.

Enough people play this game for the story to grow for next couple of years at least. The current game setting isn't that interesting for you but there is plenty of people who are still enjoying it. World doesn't revolve around you and WoW won't stop only because you are bored of it.

[Selastan]

I don't want anything to happen to the timeline.

If I had to chose, though...do the reset. There's a reason Steel Ball Run is the most beloved JoJo arc.

[Beloren]

unless it's timed with an expac like SL where we could be outside normal time anything over 5-10 years is pushing it imo. I'd set it up so an expac sends the heroes to some world outside of the normal flow of time, come back and its been so long they were presumed dead... possibly just remember in song/legend if the skip is long enough. would be the best time to have done a level reset, and to do a skill reset etc...basically wow 2.0

SL could be exactly that as @Amnaught pointed out - we come back and decades even over a century has passed.

We are viewed as omens of doom, because oh, us showing up means that massive new trouble is on the horizon - some hail as as god like beings, others as heralds of doom, some of us ujust want our lives back

SHame there is no real story for our characters. I like how SWTOR based it on a class, and the class hero had a story, I think wow should base it on race or go deeper and do something unique for every race and class combo - hat like GW2 you have a specific story...and you can add gneeral caveats like whether you had a family, or note tc.

None of that is possible in wow, but hten i guess it doesn't mean much for whacking monsters, but it can add weightiness to why you fight.

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About 5-10 years, I believe. Good timing would've been if time ran differently in Shadowlands but that was changed to the concept of time making it feel like going slower.

I would love a skip so that zone could have a reason to be updated.

oh they made it go slower.. when was this? I mean i nkow this can be reversed, but it sounds like we are going to return to basically the state of affairs we left off with nothing changed so a nother expansion without recvamp.. can you imagine coming back decades later and Queen Azshara was basically running everything and hailed as some great saviour of Azeroth

The Queen brought back propsperity, growth, development, and magical wonder for all... and we have eto convince our people's she hasn't changed, she is deceiving you.

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Something that's long enough to have interesting changes to the world and giving us the feeling of having to catch up with whats going on, but also not too long because you still want to come across a lot of the same npcs and characters.

I guess many of the elven NPCs would still be around, but which NPCs would you like to still be there and wouldn't you enjoy the prospect of meeting say their grand children or several generations down, where some have really made a name for themselves..

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At least 200 years. Long enough for a new era and the status quo is completely different. The current world and characters have been exhausted and the writing has been getting poorer and poorer to try to keep them going. Start fresh with a new cast of characters and the races being in different situations than they are now.

I'm more leaning towards this I think 200 years is sufficient time to have some real surprises and shifts, and ofc a hoste of new stuff, ita lso has a lot of room to tell the "what happened to" for everyone including elves

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They can time skip all they want to whenever they want, but it won't matter unless they shift their game design. Blizzard is not invested in its world anymore. Hell, the modern writers and devs give me the impression they don't even like the setting or anything it originated from or they wouldn't be so hell bent on radically changing it and erasing the past. It's all just an excuse to make dungeons/raids. PvE content is their strength and that's all they really care about. Repetitive, unimaginative questing, a stagnant unresponsive world, professions that don't matter, Disneyesque story, ridiculously imbalanced PvP, killing immersion with modern moral and political ideologies, and so forth and so on.

If they time skipped, we'd just get the same shit. Whatever changes they made to the world would no doubt be steps backwards and be uninteresting or get resolved immediately and be of no real consequence. I don't think Blizzard should waste their time revamping anything if all they plan to do is make everything a stepping stone to the next raid; the only content they think matters.

Presumably, this ist he opportunity a time skip can afford them, to really refresh and revamp shake things up a bit, even change their style a bit. Maybe shift from event story telling to racial progression instead for instance...

[exochaft]

They can time skip all they want to whenever they want, but it won't matter unless they shift their game design. Blizzard is not invested in its world anymore. Hell, the modern writers and devs give me the impression they don't even like the setting or anything it originated from or they wouldn't be so hell bent on radically changing it and erasing the past. It's all just an excuse to make dungeons/raids. PvE content is their strength and that's all they really care about. Repetitive, unimaginative questing, a stagnant unresponsive world, professions that don't matter, Disneyesque story, ridiculously imbalanced PvP, killing immersion with modern moral and political ideologies, and so forth and so on.

If they time skipped, we'd just get the same shit. Whatever changes they made to the world would no doubt be steps backwards and be uninteresting or get resolved immediately and be of no real consequence. I don't think Blizzard should waste their time revamping anything if all they plan to do is make everything a stepping stone to the next raid; the only content they think matters.

That's going to be the main problem, as most of the issues all tie in together. There's tons of people who will not play a game that has a decently good story but has bad gameplay and design (the opposite is true, as well). Even the story concept itself can be great, but it needs to be delivered together in a cohesive package that's overall appealing.

Putting that aside, it's becoming very apparent that the focus on making a well-written and entertaining story is not there. The writing has begun to devolve into levels of absurdity filled with plot contrivances just to make events happen, character inconsistency, forced insertion of social/political commentary into the narrative(s) that makes zero sense, heavy usage of nostalgia to cover up issues, etc. Basically, we're getting to the standard Hollywood and network TV levels of writing that has sunken to a quality that's bland and uninspiring on a good day. This gets even worse when trying to add in time travel components, as the writers rarely ever think of the actual rules/implications beyond "I want this to happen, so time travel!" In today's world of terrible writing, you want to be the exception, but Blizz is intent upon going with the crowd on this one. This is why even if you wanted to reset the story, the main issue is that you have the same people writing the story from which you wanted to escape.

Anyways, if we lived in some magical world where WoW would get some talented writers alongside fixing the game to where they compliment each other in terms of who keeps in the players instead of competing for the reason why players don't like WoW... you'd either need to make a large enough time skip that the current generation is grown up or gone, or you'd need to shift the narrative far ahead or beyond the boundaries of the current world. A third option would be to being wrapping things up and move onto another game, a fresh slate if you will for the franchise, but that's super unrealistic at this point. Regardless of option, the writers should really distance themselves from the current storyline to lessen its impact on future storylines, especially if you think it's detrimental. At this point you can't really decanonize an expansion (unless you pull a WoD with alternate universe stuff, but even that had trickle effects into the main timeline), but pressing the proverbial reset button and creating distance is a viable option.

[Lochton]

oh they made it go slower.. when was this? I mean i nkow this can be reversed, but it sounds like we are going to return to basically the state of affairs we left off with nothing changed so a nother expansion without recvamp.. can you imagine coming back decades later and Queen Azshara was basically running everything and hailed as some great saviour of Azeroth

The Queen brought back propsperity, growth, development, and magical wonder for all... and we have eto convince our people's she hasn't changed, she is deceiving you

Apparently, they decided time just feels slower in the Shadowlands but really isn't.

As well, I like the idea that we sent all the "heroes" to Shadowlands, making Azeroth a target for the more down-to-earth threats, like cartels, bandits, mercs, pirates, and the likes. It would've made good reason to update the world then because the big bad threats might just be the greed of Gallywix, and the Queen wants to take power over the rest of us.